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WHY IS MY ENERGY BILL SO HIGH?
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/why-is-my-energy-bill-so-high/

Heating or eating? That has become a burning question for many people. From struggling households to steel works and factories, energy prices remain a hot topic. Ed Miliband’s assurance that bills would fall by £300 per year looks wildly optimistic.

The cost of energy bills became a major political issue when a combination of a post-pandemic resurgence of the world economy and war in Ukraine sent the price of energy in general, and natural gas in particular, shooting up. Prices have come down a lot since then, but remain higher than before. The Ofgem energy price cap for a ‘typical household’ increased from £1,137 per year in January 2019 to £1,720 in July 2025 – a rise of over 50 per cent.

Supporters of renewable energy argue that the UK is still at the mercy of global prices for gas because ‘gas sets the price’ in the energy market, thanks to the way the ‘merit order’ works for wholesale energy prices: the most expensive form of energy that is used sets the price for everything. Generally, that is gas. Get rid of fossil fuels, we are told, and we would have lower prices and less exposure to world markets.

However, critics point out that the wholesale price is only part of the story. The retail price of energy includes a variety of subsidies for renewable energy that mean the actual price renewable producers receive is much higher. If renewables are really as cheap as their proponents claim, why do they need to be subsidised and why do countries that use a lot of renewables also have the highest energy bills? Will prices rise further as we use even more renewables? And if energy security is so important, why would we want to rely on intermittent energy sources like wind and solar?

In this session, energy experts will explain how our energy bills remain so high and what the consequences are for household finances and the wider economy.

Speakers
Lord Mackinlay
director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation

Kathryn Porter
consultant, Watt-Logic

David Turver
energy policy analyst, Eigen Values

Chair
Rob Lyons
science and technology director, Academy of Ideas; convenor, AoI Economy Forum; author, Panic on a Plate

Why is my energy bill so high?

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MISINFORMATION, THE MEDIA AND THE FIGHT FOR TRUTH
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/the-rise-and-fall-of-private-life/

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously said: ‘If you have something to hide, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.’ Today, demands for privacy are often viewed with suspicion, and protecting secrets is seen as dodgy and evasive. Consequently, even the most sacrosanct or protected private exchanges face demands to be opened up or are regularly leaked – whether it is doctor/patient confidentiality, the sanctity of the confessional or ‘off the record’ briefings.

Making public our most private thoughts and activities has become fashionable. Reality TV cameras are invited into the family home and to record our breakups while celebrities and royals share intimate secrets on podcasts with millions. Teenagers broadcast their lives on TikTok and sexting is normalised while ordinary people facing terminal illness can become famous by revealing their struggles. Broadcasting personal sexual activity is now posited as positively taking control, in contrast with the old patriarchal clandestine pornographies. On OnlyFans, the bedroom has become a broadcast studio.

Unsurprisingly, with so many content to relinquish privacy, there are doubts about whether there is a public appetite for resisting more official incursions into our hard-won private space. From facial-recognition cameras to Digital ID, mindless clicks to routine app permissions, threats of ‘back door’ access to Apple users’ data or corporate recording of our purchases, campaigners worry that Britain is one of the most surveilled countries in the world. Where once we could walk around town, chat with mates in the pub or making off-colour jokes with friends safe in the knowledge these were essentially private matter, now they are subject to policy interventions and the glare of Big Brother. Yet concerns about these trends seldom find their way to the top of the political agenda and such interventions are frequently defended and justified.

How do we determine what should remain private versus public? As society changes, should we accept that that activities once considered private should now be accepted as public affairs? With the ubiquity of new technologies – from smartphones to social-media services to AI – eroding the capacity to protect our privacies in everyday interactions, do we need to move with the times and accept the inevitable: that technological forces will shape our attitudes toward privacy? Or should we resist, and at least dig deeper to understand why and how the right to privacy became a key civil liberty?

Could examining the history of the cultural, philosophical, social and moral importance of privacy, as Tiffany Jenkins does in Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life, help us navigate the balance between public and private, and why our right to privacy should matter?

Speakers
Andrew Gold
YouTuber; host, Heretics

Abbot Christopher Jamison
Abbot President, English Benedictine Congregation; author, Finding the Language of Grace: rediscovering transcendence

Dr Tiffany Jenkins
writer and broadcaster; author, Strangers and Intimates and Keeping Their Marbles

Chair
Timandra Harkness
journalist, writer and broadcaster; author, Technology is Not the Problem and Big Data: does size matter?; presenter, Radio 4's FutureProofing and How to Disagree

Misinformation, the media and the fight for truth

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RELIGIOUS FERVOUR: THE RISE OF FAITH OR CULTURAL CHRISTIANITY?
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/religious-fervour-the-rise-of-faith-or-cultural-christianity/

Lots of people are converting to Christianity and, across the country, church attendance is increasing. While the numbers vary, one survey shows the number of people attending church at least once a month is up from eight per cent in 2018 to 12 per cent in 2024. Perhaps most notably, the survey shows a quadrupling of attendance among Gen Zers, aged 18 to 24, from four per cent to 16 per cent.

The story of modern society has often been told as a rise of secularism and atheism, but after the peak of new atheism in the early 2010s, trends are now reversing. From sold-out events on faith with musician Nick Cave and historian Tom Holland to a swath of new books on the place of god in society, there is public appetite for grappling with religion.

Some argue that this is a ‘quiet revival’ driven mainly by changing perceptions of religion and a collective search for meaning in modern societies that are increasingly individualistic and atomised. Others point to public figures like Jordan Peterson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for whom Christianity is part of a larger project to save Western civilisation. Others still argue that there is something distinct and more therapeutic about modern forms of Christian worship – more focused on introspection and personal development than community and morality. Some believers are uneasy about these more pragmatic justifications for faith.

What is the driving force of the resurgence of Christianity? Is this emerging Christianity different from its traditional forms? Is the Christian revival political, or are people searching for meaning? Are we seeing a rise of true faith, or merely cultural Christianity? Is there a difference?

Speakers
Dolan Cummings
writer and novelist; co-director, Manifesto Club

Pamela Dow
chief operating officer, Civic Future

Simon Evans
comedian; GB News and BBC TV and radio regular; presenter, BBC Radio 4's Simon Evans Goes to Market

Abbot Christopher Jamison
Abbot President, English Benedictine Congregation; author, Finding the Language of Grace: rediscovering transcendence

Emma Trimble
writer and broadcaster; fellow, New Culture Forum

Chair
Dr James Panton
deputy head welfare, St Edwards School, Oxford; associate lecturer in philosophy, The Open University

Religious fervour: the rise of faith or cultural Christianity?

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BATTLE BOOK CLUB: TERF ISLAND - HOW THE UK RESISTED TRANS IDEOLOGY
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/meet-the-author-fiona-mcanena-on-terf-island-how-the-uk-resisted-trans-ideology/

TERF Island is the story of the brave and determined women who led the charge against demands that undermined their rights and jeopardised the physical and mental health of children. They dragged shadowy campaigns into the daylight, exposing the harm that would result – and the harm that had already been done. They forced policy change, set legal precedents and transformed public opinion.

Fiona McAnena has been right there campaigning alongside them. Her unique insight and personal involvement bring to life the intimate human stories behind the movement to Keep Britain Terfy. This extraordinary, inspiring, furious and sometimes funny account shows how a few women, acting on their convictions, turned back a tide which threatened to sweep away the rights their foremothers fought for.

McAnena’s book offers rare insight into the strategy, setbacks, and successes of years of grassroots activism and reveals the key figures behind the resistance to gender ideology. It also critically examines the claims of transgender ideology and explores the impact of gender identity policies on law, language, sport, prisons and children’s health, arguing why sex matters in public life.

Should trans rights be prioritised over childhood and the protection of women? How have trans lobbyists unpicked past medical and scientific standards – undermining solid trials and ethical approval? Is there a way to move forward, to safeguard women’s sports and maintain vigorous scientific standards? What enabled the UK to be ‘TERF Island’ when so many other jurisdictions have fallen to trans ideology?

Speakers
Sonya Douglas
artist, poet and campaigner

Fiona McAnena
director of campaigns, Sex Matters; author, Terf Island: How the UK resisted trans ideology

Connie Shaw
external affairs officer, The Free Speech Union

Chair
Ceri Dingle
director, WORLDwrite and WORLDbytes

Battle Book Club: TERF Island - How the UK Resisted Trans Ideology

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IS THERE A RIGHT TO DIE: THE MORAL DILEMMAS OF ASSISTED DEATH
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/is-there-a-right-to-die-the-moral-dilemmas-of-assisted-death/

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is still being discussed in parliament. But beyond proposals for a law change, how should we tackle one of the great debates of our time: should we set up a system of assisted death and profound questions it raises about everything from whether adults have a right to assistance to end their own life to what safeguards and protections should exist between individuals and the state when death is offered as a medical option by health professionals.

Philosopher and bestselling author of Material Girls Kathleen Stock will lead a discussion raising themes in her forthcoming book Do Not Go Gentle, arguing that we should reaffirm life, rather than death and collectively, we should rage against the dying of the light.

The issue throws up many moral dilemmas worth discussing: Is the status quo a ‘cruel mess,’ to quote campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen? Is assisted death for those with a terminal illness, or suffering chronic pain or extreme mental distress, a progressive and compassionate choice as its supporters argue? Does it give a person more “freedom” or “control” over their lives, allow dignity in dying as it were? How should we square a patient’s freedom of choice with existing frameworks of medical ethics? Will having the right to take control of your death by asking a doctor to kill you, really have broader sinister outcomes for the vulnerable, the elderly, the disabled, the suicidally depressed as its opponents warn? Is it ever possible to guard effectively against situations in which people are coerced to die, either by family members or by a state that is too often incapable of providing adequate palliative care? Or are such slippery slope arguments just a form of emotive scaremongering? How should we all approach our own or loved ones’ terminal illness and death?

Speakers
Dr Az Hakeem
consultant psychiatrist and medical director, Psyche Clinic; author, Trans and Detrans

Sonia Sodha
columnist and broadcaster

Dr Kathleen Stock
columnist, UnHerd; co-director, The Lesbian Project; author, Do Not Go Gentle: The Case Against Assisted Death

Professor Kevin Yuill
emeritus professor of history, University of Sunderland; author, Assisted Suicide: the liberal, humanist case against legalization

Chair
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; independent peer, House of Lords; author, I STILL Find That Offensive!

Is there a right to die: The moral dilemmas of assisted death

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THE RISE OF THE WORKPLACE SPEECH POLICE
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/the-rise-of-the-workplace-speech-police/

The British workplace is now too often a toxic environment, a hotbed of grievance culture, lawfare and an ever-expanding number of disciplinary codes unrelated to the nature of specific jobs. Over the past year, there’s been a 23 per cent rise in cases at employment tribunals and a two-year waiting list, due to a growing backlog, with workplace conflicts estimated to now cost businesses £28.5 billion annually.

How did this come about?

The UK is a world leader in human relations (HR). With over half a million HR workers – almost double the number of 15 years ago – Britain stands second in the global league table for size of HR sector as a share of all occupations. Over seven in 10 FTSE 100 companies now boast a ‘chief HR officer’ on their executive committee, reflecting the elevated status of this newfound ‘profession’.

We might expect this might lead to happier more productive workers, fewer grievances and higher job retention. Yet the growth of the HR industrial complex doesn’t appear to have led to better workplace outcomes or harmony.

Arguably, HR is as much the problem as the solution. HR departments – until recently humdrum administrative hubs managing payrolls, processing sick notes and checking firms complied with employment law – have now morphed into real centres of power. They are the enforcers of workplace orthodoxies, controlling what workers can say or do, who keeps their job, and even shaping corporate missions. For example, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is charged with versing workers in new values, from DEI literacy to managing emotional security.

What’s more, the traditional defenders of workers’ rights – trade unions – are increasingly acting in lockstep with HR managers’ priorities. A recent paper by the Free Speech Union, Shopped Stewards, revealed the divisive nature of union bureaucrats’ adherence to identity politics, which means they often side with the DEI initiatives of their employers, as opposed to defending their members’ rights. For example, teacher Simon Pearson was fired by Preston College after a complaint from a Muslim representative of the National Education Union (NEU). Pearson was accused of being ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘racially discriminatory’ for social-media posts, such as saying Lucy Connolly ‘should not have been jailed’.

Another report suggests that specific legislation has led to a deterioration in workplace relations. The Don’t Divide Us report, The Equality Act Isn’t Working, reveals the ‘expansionary logic’ of the Equality Act 2010 has provided the legal scaffolding that supports a surge in (largely unsuccessful) workplace race–discrimination claims. This, DDU argues, contributes to a grievance culture where people resort to ‘lawfare’ to resolve ‘petty disputes and imagined slights’, while empowering thin-skinned employees to wilfully misinterpret perfectly innocent comments or interactions.

Can the workplace be detoxified? How can we tame the HR monster? Can trade unions return to a ‘one for all, all for one’ role of protecting workers’ rights? Can laws that are divisive in workplaces be reined in?

Speakers
Pamela Dow
chief operating officer, Civic Future

Paul Embery
firefighter; trade unionist; author, Despised: why the modern Left loathes the working class; broadcaster

Maya Forstater
chief executive, Sex Matters

Dr Anna Loutfi
employment and human rights barrister; advisory council member, Don’t Divide Us

Chair
Para Mullan
former operations director, EY-Seren; fellow, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

The rise of the workplace speech police

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DEEPFAKES: THE MEDIA'S NEW CHALLENGE
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/deepfakes-the-medias-new-challenge/

The proliferation of Al-generated imagery now means our social-media feeds are filled with the likes of popes in padded jackets, Studio Ghibli memes and lots of fat cats. While these are likely to make you chuckle, there is a darker side to this kind of imagery, which includes deepfakes. Defined as any image or recording that has been ‘convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone’ – often maliciously – some have predicted that eight million will be shared by the time 2025 is done, up from 500,000 in 2023.

Recent elections around the globe pointed to the power of these creations to move the dial. There was Biden apparently telling Democrats not to vote and the digital resurrection of long-time dictator Suharto in Indonesia, essentially endorsing his son-in-law, who went on to win. The AI-generated Fake Pentagon Explosion image a couple of years ago, depicting a massive explosion and smoke plume near the Pentagon, went viral, was shared by verified accounts and financial news outlets, and sparked panic in the markets.

More recently, AI-generated or manipulated visuals have proliferated during the Israel-Hamas conflict since October 2023, often amplifying emotional narratives to fuel propaganda. These fakes have been shared millions of times on social media, exploiting the war’s real horrors to inflame tensions, manipulate public opinion and, in turn, eroding trust in real evidence.

With many news organisations increasingly looking to social-media platforms as a way of newsgathering, deepfakes represent a novel challenge for verification, especially when trying to beat rivals to publish in an always-on ecosystem. Alongside AI-generated ‘facts’ and ‘quotes’ that are fictitious, are journalists likely to inadvertently share manipulated misinformation?

So what can be done? Part of the solution may lie with journalist’s ability to parse what is real and not. But as the technology improves and becomes more effective, digital tools – including Al – will be needed. But while we wait for more sophisticated technical solutions, some worry the threat of deepfakes will be yet another excuse for online censorship. And anyway, as journalists are professionally trained to check sources, do they need to maintain standards in being less credulous and more sceptical?

But more broadly, with trust levels in the news media for many already at rock bottom, is the threat that deepfakes pose really a novel one, especially when more old-fashioned, staged-for-the-camera reactions to Israeli attacks in Gaza are commonplace online? Are deepfakes just the latest problem plaguing an industry struggling with confirmation bias, tribalism and mistrust?

Speakers
Liam Deacon
communications and campaigns consultant, Pagefield Communications; former journalist; former head of press, Brexit Party

Jenny Holland
writer and critic; former assistant, New York Times; author, Saving Culture (from itself) Substack

Jacob Mchangama
executive director, The Future of Free Speech

Chair
Max Sanderson
assistant managing editor, Guardian

Deepfakes: the media's new challenge

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BEWARE OF THE MANOSPHERE? MISOGYNY AND TOXIC MASCULINITY
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/beware-the-manosphere-misogyny-and-toxic-masculinity/

Netflix’s hit series Adolescence seemed to capture the current anxiety surrounding young men and what they might be getting up to online. The show tells the story of a teenage boy who, seemingly out of the blue, stabs and kills his female classmate after she calls him an ‘incel’ online. The message of the show points to influencers like Andrew Tate and the so-called ‘manosphere’ as the cause for the boy’s violent tendencies.

For the uninitiated, the manosphere is a term which incapsulates the various YouTube channels, chat forums and other corners of the internet where men can get advice on everything from parenting skills to relationship advice – often with a sexist twist. Many took the message of Adolescence and ran with it. The UN has ‘sounded the alarm over online misogyny’. Politicians even argued that the show should be compulsory viewing for school-age children.

But others are worried that the Adolescence effect has caused something of a moral panic. Figures like Tate might enjoy online popularity, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that young men are all turning into misogynists. In fact, the finger-pointing around discussions about toxic masculinity and what boys should and shouldn’t do has, some argue, pushed young men into the hands of Tate and his contemporaries who preach pride instead of shame about being a man.

As one person interviewed by the Manchester Evening News put it, some kids have never heard the word ‘masculinity’ without the word ‘toxic’ added to it. Critics also argue that relationships between men and women have, in many ways, never been better. Sexism used to be the social norm for our mothers and grandmothers, but is increasingly becoming an anomaly.

Do we need to reassess what we mean by misogyny and toxic masculinity? Are we in danger of writing off all young men and boys as having a problem with women that needs fixing? Or is the new world of identity politics and online content influencing men to behave in a way that is unacceptable, whatever you term it? What is really going on with how men feel about women in the real world, away from laptop screens? And if we’ve failed to succeed up until now, how can we change how we talk to our sons about what kind of men we want them to be?

Speakers
Julie Bindel
journalist; author, Lesbians: Where are we now?; feminist campaigner; podcast host, Julie in Genderland

Dr Az Hakeem
consultant psychiatrist and medical director, Psyche Clinic; author, Trans and Detrans

Nina Power
writer and philosopher; author, What Do Men Want? Masculinity and its Discontents

Dr Stuart Waiton
senior lecturer, sociology and criminology, Abertay University; author, Scared of the Kids: curfews, crime and the regulation of young people; chair, Scottish Union for Education

Dr Joanna Williams
academic; author, How Woke Won and Women vs Feminism

Chair
Ella Whelan
co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; journalist; author, What Women Want

Beware of the Manosphere? Misogyny and Toxic Masculinity

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WHAT DOES POST WOKE ART LOOK LIKE?
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/what-does-post-woke-art-look-like/

In December last year, critic Dean Kissick, in an article for Harper’s Magazine, caused controversy in the contemporary art world. He complained that the ‘fascination with identity’ was lending to a ‘nostalgic turn to history’. The ‘socially conscious turn’ of the early 2010s, he said, meant prestigious galleries were overwhelmed with works that were ‘progressive in content but conservative in form’, noting that ‘everyone in the world of contemporary art wants to revive a tradition, however recent’. What is lacking, he wrote, is much that is ‘inventive or interesting’.

Perhaps this wave of progressivism is over. Commentators have heralded Trump’s second term as a ‘vibe shift’ and a rejection of identity politics. Following the cues of New York’s postliberal ‘Dimes Square’ subculture, youth-oriented ‘post-woke’ cultural scenes have popped up in major cities.

But the same issues arise in these enclaves: few of the emerging works appear visually or ideologically new. For example, New York’s Fiume Gallery greeted Trump’s ‘spiritual insurrection’ by adopting the accelerationist ideals of the Italian Futurists and the neoclassical look of online ‘vaporwave’. Fashion designer Elena Velez shocked magazine editors by taking aesthetic cues from Gone with the Wind. And in June, ‘dark enlightenment’ figure Curtis Yarvin put in a bid to represent the United States at the 2026 Venice Biennale with a pavilion themed around Titian’s Rape of Europa.

‘Art wants to break taboos’, Yarvin told Vanity Fair. But artists have been trying to break taboos since the age of Duchamp’s urinal. Will these latest provocations continue to resound when even the president himself relies on social-media shock tactics?

How will a post-woke age affect the output of the contemporary art world? What role should artists take in the ‘vibe shift’? Will new styles emerge to greet this new political landscape – or did the roots of our old artistic stagnancy lie in something deeper than identity politics? And after years of a political controversy-offence cycle, is there still potential for grassroots provocation?

Speakers
Dr JJ Charlesworth
art critic; editor, ArtReview

Pierre d’Alancaisez
co-founder, Verdurin; art critic, The Critic

Maria Lisogorskaya
artist; co-founding member, Assemble

Dr Ella Nixon
art historian and writer; post-doctoral researcher, University of Cambridge

Professor Ian Pace
pianist and professor of music at City, University of London

Chair
Vicky Richardson
architectural writer and curator; former head of architecture and Drue Heinz Curator, Royal Academy of Arts

What does post-woke art look like?

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INCITEMENT LAW: A TOOL FOR CENSORSHIP?
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/incitement-law-a-tool-of-censorship/

After riots that followed three fatal stabbings in Southport last year, over 30 people were arrested for social-media posts, and many subsequently convicted. Most prominently, Lucy Connolly was jailed 31 months for ‘stirring up racial hatred’ after tweeting ‘set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care’. Andrew McIntyre received seven and a half years for posting on his Telegram channel a call for attacks on mosques and including maps. But since then, Labour councillor Ricky Jones has been acquitted of encouraging violent disorder when urging attendees at a London rally to cut the throats of far-right protesters. And punk duo Bob Vylan escaped police charges for chanting ‘death, death to the IDF’ to Glastonbury crowds and BBC viewers.

Such cases have reignited debate over the definition and purpose of the charge of ‘incitement’. Sitting at the murky intersection between speech and actions, even firm free-speech advocates draw differing conclusions. In respect of Lucy Connolly, Lord Sumption defended the conviction as consistent with the law. Others, such as Andrew Doyle and the Free Speech Union, said that Connolly’s words either fall short of true incitement or her punishment was disproportionate to the crime. What factors determine an offence of incitement, placing what is said beyond the realm of free speech within the law?

While liberal democracies traditionally drew a clear line between speech and action, this line is blurring. In Britain, ‘hate speech’ legislation can mean that emotional impact is conflated with intent, subjective offence with objective threat, and expressions deemed likely to incite hatred can be punished regardless of whether violence follows.

In the US, incitement is strictly defined by the Brandenburg test: speech must be intended to incite ‘imminent lawless action’ and likely to produce such action. Few cases have ever met this threshold. But growing criticism of a lack of regulations on ‘hate speech’ and ‘misinformation’, and disapproval of Trump’s actions on free speech, mean that constitutional protections are being tested. Will incitement become an issue in America, too?

How should incitement be defined?  When does robust speech become criminal incitement and how should free speech be balanced with public order? Do we need a Brandenburg test in Britain, or is America’s approach dangerously lax? Is there a danger that protecting public safety is a pretext for silencing people, and that law becomes a tool of political policing, weaponising incitement law for ideological ends? And what counts – or should count – as free speech, even if it’s offensive to many?

Speakers
Albie Amankona
broadcaster; financial analyst; executive member, 2022 Group; champion, Next Gen Tories; general council, LGBT+ Conservatives; co-founder, Conservatives Against Racism.

Steven Barrett
barrister; broadcaster; writer on law, Spectator

Bryn Harris
Chief Legal Counsel, Free Speech Union

Dr Joanna Williams
academic; author, How Woke Won and Women vs Feminism

Chair
Luke Gittos
criminal lawyer; author, Human Rights – Illusory Freedom; director, Freedom Law Clinic

Incitement law: a tool of censorship?

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